Dangerous Business/Chapter 7
The marriage announcement in four words, flying to the gray, windy skies and heavier conscience of Chicago, never reached Ellen, for she was out of the office when it arrived. Mr. Rountree opened it and pocketed it before she returned.
So she was in suspense and excited, constantly. At one hour she felt able to do any amount of work and she wanted to work, work with her hands and head; at another she wanted never to see work again, never to scratch another line in a notebook, never type another letter, telephone another business message; she wanted, at these wild, sudden moments, to be only . . . a woman.
Lida Haige, who was Lida Rountree now or soon would be, had been only a woman and she had him. Something more was to be known about it, to be sure. Here was the Nucast order upon Mr. Rountree's desk; and this—a mere business matter, apparently—was tied to the motive in Jay's return to New York to marry Lida.
Ellen spread the sheets of the order pages before her and looked them over and over, scarcely noticing the items. It was as if the secret lay between the rows of figures, if she could read it. Mr. Rountree, watching her, asked:
"Anything wrong with those totals?"
"Not with the totals," she said.
"It is an excellent order," he commented.
"Yes."
She sat close beside Mr. Rountree scheduling, on the sheets which would go to the shops, the work on the Nucast order. She did it quickly and competently, with her fingers flying and her head alert and clear; soon Mr. Rountree ceased even his suggestions and merely waited until she had finished with a sheet, when he would pick it up and hold it at arm's length, studying it with his deliberate, farsighted eyes.
"Very good," he approved her.
It was the week when all orders were scheduled and estimates made for the next year; and, in spite of this excellent order from the east, the schedule was scant; for two big pieces of western business, which had been with Rountree last winter, had gone to the Slengels; and, as Di had warned Ellen, the Metten account was uncertain.
"Sam Metten, who does the buying, is strongly influenced toward Slengels," read the office confession, in Mr. Lowry's own hand, on the report sheet of this account.
Di, this meant; Di was "ripping it away"—Di, in her décolleté, upon Sam Metten's knees.
Ellen thought of Di here in the-outer office, tapping at a typewriter, with her mind never on her work, her fingers perfectly manicured, always, but fumbling. Her head (the inside of it) and her hands (the skill of them) held no threat to Rountree, though the Slengels employed her. Her loveliness and femininity and allure for men endowed her with a different power, when she ceased trying to be a working-girl and became just . . . woman.
There were several men to whom Ellen was attractive not for the competency of her hands and head, but for her femininity. The most important of them, rated by worldly rank rather than in the scale of her regard, was in the Rountree offices to-day. He was Lew Alban, the son of old Stanley Alban, of the Alban Appliance Company, down state, and he was by all odds the best customer of Rountree's. The Albans, indeed, had been associated with the Rountrees so long and so intimately that they 'could scarcely be called mere customers.
Mr. Stanley Alban was over eighty. He had put old Mr. Rountree (who now was dead) in business. The Rountree Company had originated with an order from Stanley Alban. In Stanley, Illinois, Stanley Alban and John Rountree together had founded and built the first Baptist church.
Their friendship and intimate business relations had survived the removal of the Rountrees, thirty years ago, from Stanley to Chicago; the friendship, and business relations, had survived old John Rountree, for the younger John had stepped, securely, into his father's place.
Twice a year, regularly, Mr. Rountree went down state and visited in the Alban home; he kept up membership in his father's church and club at Stanley; he sat in his father's chair at the town missionary board meetings. At least twice a year, until recently, old Mr. Alban had journeyed to Chicago and been a guest in the Rountree home.
Hardly like a guest, he was, Ellen knew; he was more like a member of the family. Certainly Lew felt himself one of the family when he was about the office. He was on far easier terms with Mr. Rountree than was Jay; he was the only person, except his father, who walked freely into the private office without knocking.
Ellen liked it in the old man but not in Lew Alban. She did not like him and his habit, not only of entering unannounced, but of lingering near her while she worked, especially when she was alone.
He was thirty-five; very thin and ascetic-looking, if you gave him only a glance; but his thinness, as Ellen happened to know, was no indication of his appetite. He was one of those men who ate, hugely, without adding an ounce. He was dark, slightly bald, slightly sallow. He was tailored in New York, whither he traveled twice yearly and saw all the new shows. Every fortnight or so, he came to Chicago; but he always returned to his importance in his little town. He liked to lounge in the Rountree offices because there, at least, in Chicago he was important. He, or the Alban company of which his father was still nominally president, kept the Rountree company busy for nearly half the year; the Alban order made up forty per cent of the business of Rountree. Lew always let you know it.
"Well, Big Gray Eyes, nearly through?" he asked her, in his smooth, smiling way.
"Not anywhere nearly," said Ellen.
"It's Christmas eve."
"Oh," said Ellen, "I've done my shopping."
"Bought my present?" he said and laughed when she shook her head.
Mr. Rountree being out of the office, Lew seated himself behind her, as he often did. He held a newspaper but she felt, without knowing it, for she would not look about, that he was watching her. He usually gave her that sensation, which she acknowledged by pulling down her skirt every few minutes. Occasionally smoke rings floated by her, aimed at her head; and when a cigarette burned out, he struck matches loudly.
While she was totaling the last entries of the new schedule and the sheets of it were spread over the desk, he arose and bent over her. Swiftly she covered her figures with a blank paper and she twisted around to him, whereat he patted her shoulder and laughed.
"You're not showing secrets," he told her. "Think I don't know all that?"
"What?"
"How you're losing business. Do you suppose the Slengels never see me? What'd you think I supposed the Slengels were operating on? Air?"
"We're doing very well," Ellen denied, loyally. "Volume isn't everything."
"Not while you have one old faithful account which carries you by itself," he agreed with her, coolly; and Ellen started at the suggestion of threat. Lose my account, now, and see where you are, was what he implied.
"I'm taking over, down at Stanley, on New Year's; did y'hear?" he asked.
"No."
"Yes. The grand old man retires."
"Oh!"
"Don't you like it?" he asked, his hand resting on her shoulder.
"Why," Ellen denied, "I've no feeling about it."
But she had; and he, with his hand upon her, discerned her opposition to the idea of him in control of the Alban company.
"Of course I congratulate you," she added, hastily.
"Thank you," he twitted her and laughed, enjoying her.
What bothered her was, he knew, not the thought of his new position in his father's firm but her realization of his increased power over the Rountrees. It was precisely what he wished to impress upon her.
He squeezed her shoulder and she ignored it, not to offend him. He was not the sort to have people at his mercy, she was thinking; and at the present moment, with two big accounts lost and the Metten business doubtful, he had the Rountrees more or less at his mercy. Suppose he stopped his order, how could they replace it? The Alban business had been fundamental, never questioned, like the sun rising to-morrow.
Suddenly she saw that he might take away his business, not for any cause but solely to flourish his self-importance and to impress his power upon the Rountrees. He did not really like Mr. Rountree she knew, and he liked Jay less. He was jealous of Jay for being naturally a sort which Lew Alban wished to be. He betrayed that Jay was now in his mind.
"By the way, when's Jay Rountree returning?"
"I don't know."
"What did he leave in the East that he had to go back for?"
So Mr. Rountree had not told him! Ellen shook her head. Lew laughed again and returned to his chair. So there he was when the call came from a newspaper office for Mr. Rountree.
He was wanted because there was news from the East about his son. What news?
"Jay ran off the day before yesterday and got married," the voice said.
Married! Ellen clenched tight the telephone transmitter and receiver; yet the word was no surprise. She had known he was to be married; but she had not known he had been married to Lida for two days. She had to keep her head about her; for the newspaper was asking something and Lew Alban, leaning close, was listening.
"Hadn't you heard of it? Didn't his father know he was married," the voice challenged her.
"Of course Mr. Rountree knew," she said.
"Did he? Did he know who to?"
"Miss Lida Haige, the daughter of Mrs. Imbrie Lytle of New York."
"Tell us about her. She was in school, we hear. He was in Harvard . . ."
Close beside her, Lew Alban bent, listening to the clack in the telephone receiver. She shut off the conversation quickly and confronted Lew, who licked his thin lips before he said:
"So he went back to get married."
Ellen sat shaking, but not because of thinking of Jay married to Lida Haige; her mind did go to that, but to Jay, married, and at the mercy, perhaps, of Lew Alban.
"His father knew, you said; was that true?" he inquired.
"Yes."
"Jay came west, first, to tell him?"
"Yes."
"Funny John Rountree never mentioned it—or sent word to my father."
"Oh, no," denied Ellen, gasping a little.
"Father would certainly expect him to; and I was right here."
"The boy ran off," said Ellen.
"You seem to know he was running. Who's his wife?"
"A New York girl."
"In school, didn't the paper say?"
He was seizing, gloating over every point to Jay's discredit. Again he referred to his father's certain offense. He wanted his father displeased with the Rountrees. Why?
Ellen's head (the clear, competent inside of her head, filled with business affairs) explained it to her. Lew Alban, planning to bestow his business elsewhere, knew that his father, though retired, would have his firm remain faithful to his old friends—unless he became offended at them. Here was a happening, made to Lew's hand to fashion into a cause of offense.
At last Lew was off to his train for home. Ellen phoned the house on Astor Street, speaking to Beedy, who promised to inform Mr. Rountree, as soon as he appeared, that the newspapers had word of Mr. Jay's marriage in New York; also that Mr. Alban had heard of it.
In the hall before the elevators, a tall young man in a blue ulster awaited Ellen and greeted her in a deep, shy voice.
"Hello, Denny," she replied, slipping her hand out of the glove, which she had half on, to meet his big, rough grasp.
"You didn't get down to home," he said.
Home for her, when he mentioned it, was not her room with Di; it was really home—her home with the light in the windows, the sparks streaking in the night from the chimney as the sled hauled you up the snowy hill in the clear, creaking cold of the starlit silence at the other end of the lake. How blue and sharp, in the still zero air, would be the stars to-night; and now and then, sudden and loud: Crack! Crack! The cold was snapping the ice in the frozen strait.
Denny's home was near by in Hoster. Denny, once, had been on the boats and had shipped for a season on the Blenmora with her father. He had abandoned the lakes for the city and was become a clerk in an insurance office; yet the sight of him and the firm, friendly hold of his red hand and his shy, bass voice overwhelmed her with homesickness here in the heated hall of an office building on Christmas eve.
"Goin' down to-night?" he questioned her.
There was his "goin' down" again, in the homely speech of her own people, of her father who would be home, home to-night. She could hear him laugh and call; she could see him, in the exuberance of his strength, swing little mother off her feet and sweep her against his breast, kiss her, and hold her higher and then let her to her feet; gently, so gently.
The lake people, her own people, her father said "down" when others, the city people, said up." Up north, the city dwellers went. The lake people journeyed and thought just oppositely; they sailed and steamed from Mackinac, in the north, "up" to the "head of the lake," up to Chicago; they returned "down" to the straits.
"No; I'm not going down," Ellen said.
Yet there was a train to-night which would deliver her to-morrow at the little snowy siding of Hoster where horses blew white breath from black nostrils and stamped, hock-high in the snow, their triumph over vanquished motor-cars. Home and the hills, her country!
In her handbag, she held the fare; she owned the holiday over the week-end Christmas into the early days of next week. She had completed the schedules of every order that was in. Mr. Rountree had told her to go.
Why didn't she? Di. She dared not desert Di this Christmas. Yet Di supplied only an additional reason. In any case, she would not go. What held her was Jay, married though she knew him to be, married for two days, the husband of Lida. Married and at Tryston with his wife—the newspaper had said they were at Tryston—on a thousand dollars.
At the end of the thousand, what and where for him and his wife? New York again or Chicago?
Word of some sort, a wire for money or another message from him must soon arrive. Perhaps on Monday. Not likely, so soon; but possibly. And possibly he, himself, with his wife would appear. Ellen would not be away; she would run no chance of being away when he, or even a message from him, arrived.
"No; I'm not going down," she said again to Denny.